People have enjoyed the aesthetic pleasures of adorning their bodies for millennia. One ancient form of body adornment is body piercing, in which a hole is made in a portion of the human body, and an ornamental object is anchored therein. A recent advancement in the body piercing arts is the development of the technique of inserting a surface anchor under the skin, to form a semi-permanent anchor on which body jewelry may be attached. The surface anchor offers the aesthetic advantage of causing the body jewelry to appear to be directly screwed to the wearer's body, which is visually striking. Some prior surface anchors included a base plate that is formed of a flat solid piece of metal, but these were relatively heavy and prone to slide undesirably under the skin. Other prior surface anchors included a base plate with internal holes formed therein. The holes in the base plate allowed tissue to grow therethrough in situ, thereby securing the anchor against sliding. However, these surface anchors with internal holes present a drawback to those people who eventually decide to remove the anchor, since tissue growth through the holes can result in a painful and injurious removal.